Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Tiger poo, black gold?

Animal poo has some weird properties. Tiger poo is the latest to be touted as the ?new black gold?. Australian researchers have found that a trail of the fierce big cat?s faeces can ward off wild goats for three days.

Somehow, this sounds familiar. It could bolster the urban myth that putting lion poo strategically in your garden will scare away domestic moggies from soiling your flowerbeds. And apparently Japan Railways found that coating lion dung paste along dangerous sections of a railway line prevented deer from slamming into the tracks.

It appears that lesser animals recognise something in the smell of big cat poo that warns them of a predator ? even if they haven?t encountered a big cat for generations.

?Goats wouldn't have seen a tiger from an evolutionary point of view for at least 15 generations but they recognise the smell of the predator," says repellent creator Peter Murray.

But poo can also be a potentially lethal liability by giving away your location. This New Scientist feature reveals why a certain caterpillar can fling its poo up to an impressive 38 times its body length away?